The Stolen Voice

Chapter Four

In the morning, nursing a headache, Gil asked the Bishop’s steward how to find Canon Drummond. This got him a close look, and a dubious,

‘Aye, m’hm. You’ll need to speak to him, right enough, though I’ve no notion what good it might do.’ The steward, a lean-faced individual with straggling grey hair, looked down at the towel and bread-knife he carried, and absently wiped the knife with the towel. ‘He’s had his troubles to bear, Maister Cunningham, and he’s badly afflicted by them.’

‘Troubles,’ repeated Gil, lifting an eyebrow.

‘His, er — his, er — a woman dear to him,’ said the steward euphemistically, ‘dwelling outside the town, dee’d a month since, and the bairn wi her. It seemed as if he’d ha been right enough, what wi his faith in God and His saints, and the comfort o his brothers in the Chapter, but then he’d the letter telling o his brother David’s return, and then ten days syne another, and since that time he’s fell straight into a great melancholy. His folk say he neither moves nor speaks the most o the time.’

‘Why should that have sent him melancholy?’ Gil asked in surprise. ‘I’d ha thought it would help him.’

‘Aye, well.’ The steward looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m no one to gossip, maister, you’ll understand — ’

‘Of course not,’ said Gil reassuringly, ‘but anything you can tell me that helps — ’

‘Aye. His man tellt me. The bairn lived a few hours, see, but it was never like to do well, and they gied it baptism in the name o David for his brother. And then it dee’d.’

‘And then his brother came back from wherever he’s been,’ said Gil. ‘I see.’

‘Aye. The way I heard it, it’s as if he’s thinking, if they’d gied the bairn some other name, it might no ha been taken.’

‘Hardly the way for a clerk to be thinking,’ observed Gil.

‘A man canny aye school his own thoughts,’ returned the steward sagely. ‘So you can call at Andrew Drum-mond’s manse, maister, but you might no get much good o’t.’

Thus warned, Gil was almost prepared for the sight of Canon Andrew Drummond, seated in the arbour at the far end of his little pleasure-garden, hands dangling between his knees, his felt hat on the bench beside him and the sun beating down on his tonsured head while he stared blankly at a knot of clipped box-hedge.

‘Here, Canon, you’ll get stricken by the sun,’ said the servant who had led Gil out from the well-appointed house. ‘Put your hat on, now,’ he instructed, lifting it. He placed it over the tonsure as if his master was a child, turning it so the single silver badge on the brim showed to advantage. ‘Here’s a man to speak to you, sent by Robert Blacader, so you’ll need to gie him an answer.’

There was a pause.

‘Blacader,’ repeated the Canon dully, and turned his gaze on Gil. ‘Aye, I feared he’d send someone. You can tell him I’m full aware o my guilt, maister. Or am I summoned to make a confession?’

‘No, sir,’ said Gil, bowing politely and trying to conceal his dismay. ‘I’m right sorry for your loss. But I’m here about another matter entirely. May I sit and talk wi you?’

‘I kent it,’ stated Drummond, his speech slow and hoarse. He was a big-boned man in his forties, in clothes which hung on him as if he had lost weight lately. Pink cheeks slumped over a square jaw, blue eyes ringed with dark shadows stared guiltily at his audience. Below the brim of the hat fair frizzy hair, clipped short, exposed his bare neck and showed a long shiny mark like an old burn scar. Sweet St Giles, thought Gil, if that was the mark of the rope, he was lucky to lose no more than his voice. ‘I kent she would dee, right from the moment she said she was howding again. And the bairn and all.’

‘It’s a great grief,’ said Gil awkwardly, and sat down uninvited so that he could put a hand on the man’s arm in sympathy. ‘Death comes to us all, soon or late, but it’s a sad thing for those left living.’ Hoccleve, he thought. That chaunge sank into myn herte-roote. Poor devil, and he has no means of mourning his mistress officially, either.

‘Now, Canon,’ said his man in bracing tones, ‘you’ve two bonnie bairns yet. Think on them, and take heart, maister.’

‘They’ve gone from me and all,’ said the Canon in his croaking voice, and sighed again. ‘A’ that’s close to me, wede awa.’

‘There’s no telling what’s God’s will,’ said Gil. ‘No sense in going to meet grief.’

‘Come away, now, maister, Mistress Nan was shriven in childbed,’ the servant pointed out, ‘and the bairn baptised all in his innocence. They’d be taen straight to Paradise, borne up by holy angels, the both o them. You’ve no call to grieve on their account, maister. And yir ither bairns are only the length o Perth wi their grandam, you can see them any time you’ve a mind to it.’ He made sympathetic faces at Gil over the Canon’s felt hat, and said in what was obviously intended as an aside, ‘It was just after we’d took the bairns to Perth, when the second letter came from Balquhidder, that he fell into this state, and I’ve no notion what to do for him.’ He bent to the Canon’s ear and went on encouragingly, ‘Brace up, now, sit nice and talk wi Blacader’s man, and I’ll bring you a wee drink and some o the honey cakes, will I?’

He departed without waiting for an answer. Drummond looked briefly at his retreating back and then at the gravel beneath his feet. Gil cleared his throat, wondering whether he should remain. The Canon’s condition answered his major question; it was hardly surprising that a man in this state had not ridden out to Balquhidder to greet his returned brother.

‘She must ha been very dear to you,’ he said. ‘Had you kent her long?’

The shadowed blue eyes flickered in his direction, and the man nodded.

‘Ten year,’ said the hoarse voice.

‘Long enough. What drew you to her? Was she bonnie?’

Another blue glance, another nod. ‘A bonnie, loving lass wi no tocher,’ pronounced Drummond in that harsh voice.

A strange epitaph, thought Gil, though he knew the kind of arrangement a cleric would offer. For a girl with no dowry like Mistress Nan, it was often an attractive alternative to a life as a poor relation in another household. What did a churchman’s mistress do to please him, apart from the obvious?

‘Did she sing for you? Play the harp?’

The Canon’s broad shoulders straightened a little, and he said more attentively, ‘What way would she be singing? I’ve to listen to the choir all day, I’ll hear no singers in my own home. She would harp for me, maister. She harpit as good as any woman in the realm o Scotland. She could ha played for the King, my poor lassie.’ Another of those huge sighs.

‘God hath her tane, I trowe, for her good fame,’ Gil quoted, ‘the more to plese and comfort his seintis.’

‘That’s bonnie,’ said Drummond after a moment. ‘Aye, that’s bonnie. My poor lass. To plese and comfort his seintis,’ he repeated, on a bitter note.

The servant returned, crunching down the gravel path with a wooden tray. The drink he had brought tasted of fruit and honey, and the little cakes were sweet and spicy. Gil was not hungry, but nibbled one to encourage Drummond, and said:

‘Canon Drummond, I’m sorry to break in on your grief — ’

‘No matter, for I’ve no right to mourn her,’ said Drummond harshly, ‘I’m guilty o her death.’

‘I wanted to ask you,’ persisted Gil, ‘about your brother David.’

‘I’ve no brother David. He’s been gone these thirty year, whatever my mother’s writ me.’

‘What do you recall of the time he vanished?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Where were you when he disappeared?’

Another shadowed glance.

‘I was here. I never left the town.’

‘Why did you not go home with him?’ Gil wondered. ‘Did you not want to see your family too?’

‘Hah.’ Drummond shook his head with a bitter laugh. ‘Walk that distance to help wi the reaping, when I could stay here and — ’ He broke off the sentence.

‘What about St Angus’ fair?’ Gil asked. ‘That would be worth the journey, surely?’

Drummond put up a hand to straighten his hat, though it had not moved.

‘Another ancient saint out of Ireland,’ he said, rather bitterly. ‘Not to me, maister.’

‘Had you any reason to think your brother might not come back to Dunblane?’

‘No!’ said Drummond sharply.

‘So he’d never said anything to suggest he might go away from here, like John Rattray?’

The Canon’s blue stare settled on Gil’s face, unreadable.

‘Like Rattray?’ he said. ‘How do you think it’s alike? The two cases are no the same.’

‘They’ve both vanished,’ Gil said, grateful for this show of alertness.

‘Aye, but Rattray was — ’ Drummond turned his gaze on the knot of trimmed box. ‘Rattray left all in good order, he’d clearly planned to go, as you’d find out if you questioned the soutar that rented his room to him, maister, whereas my brother was borne up and taken away unexpected.’

‘By the fairy-folk,’ said Gil. Drummond gave another of those small bitter laughs.

‘So my mither aye said. It contented her.’

‘And now he’s returned,’ said Gil deliberately.

‘Aye. I should never ha baptised the bairn in his name. It’s fetched him back, hasn’t it?’

‘I’d have thought his friends would be glad to hear he’s home,’ Gil offered. ‘Has William Murray at Dunkeld heard, do you know?’

Drummond was still for a moment, then raised his head.

‘His friends,’ he said. ‘Aye. He’d more than one. I’d forgot Billy Murray.’

‘And you? Were you glad to hear it?’

A sour smile spread across Drummond’s face.

‘That depends,’ he said. ‘That depends on how well he can sing now.’

Riding back past the winding loch, with the men joking at his back, Gil tried to fit the new information into the picture he held already. It seemed to do little to clarify matters. The songman did appear to have left peacefully and of his own accord, but what was one to make of Walter Muthill’s account of the figure at the window in the twilight? The boy was very clear about what he had seen and heard, but in the absence of a smell of sulphur or scorch marks on the windowsill, Gil was not inclined to believe the interpretation Walter had supplied. There seemed no obvious reason why the Devil should carry away a decent man. And why had the decent man given his friends no sign that he was leaving? He must have had at least a day in which he could have said his farewells, and yet he seemed to have gone to some lengths to leave in secret.

As for the older matter, the only gain there was another tangle of questions, and some new names to ask them of. If David Drummond had really fallen into some crevice in the hills, thirty years since on his way back from Dalriach, then the young man using that name now was not the same person. If he had not — if he had vanished in the same way as John Rattray and the other adults this year — then he still seemed unlikely to be the same person, but in that case who was he? His brother Andrew would make little sense any time soon, Gil judged, and Kilgour’s account suggested there was not much more information to be got in Dunblane. More useful to ask around Balquhidder, and perhaps in Dunkeld.

‘Haw, Maister Gil,’ said Tam from behind him, and urged his horse forward alongside Gil’s. ‘See yon farm?’ He pointed across the loch, where a burn tumbled down a narrow glen from a saddle-like pass between a vast rugged shape and a smaller one. A huddle of low buildings lay near the foot of the glen, where the slope eased before it met the loch shore. ‘They’re saying that’s where the lad-die’s friend dwelt.’

‘What, there?’ Gil looked about, surveying the landscape. They were near the head of the loch; there would certainly be a track to that side of the glen. ‘How did you learn that, Tam?’

His servant shrugged eloquently.

‘Lachie, him that’s head o the stables at Stronvar, minds when the laddie vanished, and he tellt me and Steenie all about it, and how he was to meet Billy Murray o Drumyre at the foot o the pass and never came there. And now these fellows,’ he jerked his head at the two sturdy men of the escort, ‘are saying yon’s the pass, and yon’s Drumyre, and still a Murray holding it.’

‘Well, I think we’ll go and call on them,’ said Gil, looking over his shoulder, ‘see if anyone minds the day. Can you guide me there? It’s no so far off our road, after all.’

The senior of the two men nodded.

‘Aye, I can take you there. But you’ll need to watch, maister,’ he cautioned, ‘it’s a Drummond you’re asking after, and these are Murrays. Gang warily, won’t ye no?’

‘I will,’ promised Gil. And don’t mention Monzievaird, he thought. How long is it — five years? No, it’s no more than three. He recalled news of the atrocity reaching Glasgow in the autumn of 1490. A scion of the house of Drummond had burned Monzievaird church, together with all the Murrays who had taken refuge inside it, shocking even his wild contemporaries. It had shocked the King and his Council too, and young Drummond had paid with his head despite the pleading of his mother and sister. This was barely sufficient for the Murrays, who still hoped to see the Drummonds wiped out in retaliation, and it seemed likely that tact would be needed.

Most of the folk of the steading were occupied with the barley. Three lean tawny dogs barked at their approach, and some of the shearers paused to watch them, gauging whether their intent was peaceful, and then whistled the animals in. The younger man-at-arms, Donal, dismounted and tramped up the long ridged field to account for their presence, returning with a laughing remark in Ersche and saying to Gil:

‘They’ll not stop the work to speak wi you, maister, but they tell me Andrew Murray’s Sìle is keeping the house, since the babe is too young to be leaving.’

The group of houses seemed to have been abandoned to the hens, but eventually they located Sìle by the gentle singing drifting from her door. She proved to be a pretty young woman with her baby at her breast, and assured them in vehement Ersche which needed no translation that she knew nothing about the tale of David Drummond. Questioned further, she pointed to a barn at the top of the settlement, dislodging the suckling baby, which began to wail angrily.

‘Euan Beag nan Tobar,’ she said firmly through the noise, and ducked back into her house. They turned to lead the horses up between the low buildings, the baby falling silent behind them as its mouth was stopped.

‘Euan’ll no be much use,’ objected the older man, whose name, Gil had established, was Ned.

‘Who is he?’ Gil asked.

‘He’s had an eye to the barn and the stackyard here, for ever so it seems.’ The man guided his horse round a discarded plough. ‘He’s wanting four of his five wits. Fell down a well at the market in Callander when he was a bairn, they say,’ he explained to Gil, ‘and was lacking in his head afore ever that happened. He’s harmless, is the best you can say o him.’

‘He’s no that bad,’ said the younger one. ‘He’s a Christian soul. He speaks Scots, a bittie.’ He tethered his own beast in the shade of the barn and stepped into the shadowy interior. ‘Euan? Euan Beag? There’s a man here wants a word wi you.’

There was silence.

‘Come out, you daft loon,’ ordered Ned from the doorway.

The silence continued, but Gil had the feeling of someone keeping silence rather than that of an empty space. Behind him Tam swallowed, and said quietly, ‘Could it be a trap, maister?’

‘No, it’s no trap,’ said Gil, and moved to the door in his turn. ‘Euan Beag, are you within? Might I have a word?’ Inside the barn, straw rustled. ‘I was told you might know something.’

The straw rustled again.

‘They’ll be pointing their big knives at him, and cutting his good ropes,’ said a quavering voice. It sounded very old.

‘No, for I’ll not allow it,’ said Gil.

It took a little more coaxing, and Ned and Donal had to be persuaded to move away from the barn door, before the owner of the voice would come out from the shadows. When he finally emerged, he hardly seemed human, a crouching figure with crooked limbs and big hands, his neck twisted so that his face turned sideways and up. He was clad in a filthy shirt and doublet, yellowish-white hair hung round the back of his head, clumps of darker beard sprouted along his jaw and a brown hen was perched comfortably on his shoulder. His eyes were large, dark and very lovely. Advancing crabwise across the packed earth floor, a hank of heather rope dragging behind him, he said in that cracked, quavering voice:

‘Who wants Euan Beag, then? What is it you would be asking him?’

Gil, aware of Tam beside him making the horns against the Evil Eye, raised his round felt bonnet to the extraordinary figure and said, ‘Good day to you, Euan Beag. How are you?’

A smile spread over the tilted face, exposing three yellow teeth and a quantity of gum.

‘Good day to you, maister. Euan’s well, and yoursel?’

‘I’m well, thanks,’ returned Gil. Was this conversation really happening? ‘Might I have a word?’ he asked again, and wished he had a pomander, or one of Lady Stewart’s pots of burning herbs. The creature had probably never been washed since he was pulled out of the well.

‘Aye, but no a long one,’ said Euan warily. ‘He’s got things he needs to get done. The ropes is all to be checked, and the barn swept and the stackyard make ready, afore the hairst comes hame, and all’s for Euan to do.’

‘And right well you’ll do it, I can be sure,’ said Gil. ‘I’ll not keep you long, I hope. Someone was telling me you’d mind when David Drummond vanished away.’

‘David Drummond,’ said the twisted man thoughtfully, scraping with bare, powerful toes at the dusty ground. The hen stretched out her head, tilting it to peer down at the movement.

‘Wee Davie from Dalriach,’ prompted Donal. Euan turned to bring the young man into his view. ‘Thirty year since, it was.’

‘Aye, it was,’ agreed Euan. He turned to face Gil again. ‘Aye, Euan can mind o’t.’ He waited, apparently for the next question. Gil, resisting the urge to twist his own neck so that his head was tilted like the one before him, said:

‘Can you tell me about it? What do you mind?’

‘Why, he was lifted up.’ Euan waved his free hand in the air, describing an airy flight. The hen scrabbled with her yellow feet, finding her balance. ‘They lifted him from the path, wi ropes.’

‘Wi ropes?’ repeated Ned. Euan gave Gil a sly smile full of purple gums, and nodded.

‘Aye, wi ropes. Many ropes, and made o hemp, better than Euan’s. That’s how he would ken them for the Good Neighbours, you ken.’

‘You saw them?’ Gil asked, startled. ‘What happened?’

The creature nodded again, a strange movement of his head on the wry neck, parallel to the ground.

‘That’s right, maister, Euan saw them. It was a great party o folk on fine horsies, as fine as your big horsie there, and they lifted wee Davie Drummond wi their ropes, and bore him away,’ again the airy gesture with the free hand, ‘and Euan fell down wi fright and never saw Davie again. Billy grat for him,’ he confided. ‘And Euan grat and all.’

‘Where was this?’ Gil asked. Euan turned to look up the glen, where small trees bent over the burn’s rocky descent.

‘Yonder,’ he said. ‘Euan was gathering heather for rope, you ken, maister, and he seen it all.’

‘Euan makes the ropes for the whole of Drumyre,’ supplied Donal, ‘and further afield and all, don’t you, Euan.’

‘On the open hillside,’ said Gil thoughtfully. ‘What like were the people?’

‘Oh, fair folk, fair folk. Dressed as fine as fine, in silk-satin-velvet, all bright colours, all in green, all wi their bonnie ropes, and the bodach in a red doublet in their midst. Euan never saw them.’

Now was that complete nonsense, or was there a grain of truth? Gil wondered.

‘And what way did they carry him off?’

Another sly smile.

‘Och, is the maister saying he believes Euan?’

‘I do,’ said Gil. At least, he prevaricated, I believe he thought he saw something strange, probably involving ropes.

The bent figure before him struck its grimy hands together and said joyfully, ‘It’s a many year since anyone was believing Euan! Och, he’ll be lighting a candle for the gentleman, so he will! Away south they took him, in a great whirl and noise, maister.’

‘South,’ repeated Gil, glancing at the sky. ‘Not westwards? Not up to the pass?’

‘South, they were going, maister,’ Euan reiterated. ‘And he was coming back from the south when he came home. Just last month, that would be, maister, and he’s in his own place over the hill now.’

‘How would you ken what way he came, you daft body?’ demanded Ned, from where he stood by the corner of the barn. ‘He cam down Glenbuckie, no Strathyre.’

Euan turned his misshapen back on the man, and gave Gil a significant look.

‘He was in Strathyre afore he was in Glenbuckie, for Euan seen him.’

‘You saw him come back?’ said Gil. ‘When was that?’

‘Euan was watching when they set him down,’ Euan agreed in his creaking voice.

‘Tell me about that,’ said Gil, trying to conceal amazement. ‘What did you see?’

‘Och, little to tell. A great whirling and sound of horses, like the first time, and they set him down on the track yonder,’ he waved a hand southward, ‘and then they were off and left him standing there. There was no ropes, not a single one. But Euan saw the bodach, aye,’ he added, ‘all in his red velvet again.’

‘What way did the horses come?’ Gil asked.

‘There’s a track up this side o the loch,’ said Ned.

‘Why would those ones be using a track?’ objected Donal.

‘Euan never saw,’ said Euan sulkily. ‘Just they were there, and set the laddie down, and bade him Godspeed and gie’s your scrip, and send word if you want us, and then they went away. They went south,’ he added, turning again in order to glower at Donal.

Gil held his breath, setting this story against his own speculations.

‘Did you speak to David?’ he asked gently. Euan turned back to consider him.

‘Aye,’ he said after a moment. ‘Euan was speaking to the laddie.’

‘What did you say to him?’ Gil prompted, and got another display of the purple gums.

‘Euan said, Billy’s no here, he couldny wait.’

‘Daft,’ muttered Tam at Gil’s elbow.

‘And what did David say to that?’ Gil asked.

Careful questioning got him the substance of the exchange. David Drummond had known Euan, had addressed him by his name, and then said that thirty years was a long time for Billy to wait and enquired if his friend was well. Euan had given him the news of Drumyre and its folk, which Gil suspected would have taken some time, and then David, asking if the way over the pass was still fit to use, had extracted himself with what was obviously tact and charm and set off up the side of the burn. Euan seemed in no doubt that he had been speaking to Billy Murray’s friend.

‘How easy is the way over to Glenbuckie?’ Gil asked. ‘Could I find it?’

Euan emitted a wheezing noise which seemed to be a laugh.

‘No, no, maister could never take it,’ he said kindly, ‘no wi a great horsie to drag along the path. The horsie would fall down and be hurtit,’ he explained.

‘He’s right at that,’ commented Ned. ‘It’s a track for a man afoot, no for a powny. But it’s no so difficult to make out, and it’s an easy enough walk down to Dalriach from the crown o the way. If you knew it was there, you’d find it no bother.’

Euan laid a huge, filthy hand on Gil’s arm, peering up at him with those beautiful eyes. The hen tipped her head and eyed him with a very similar expression.

‘Was that all the word you was wanting?’ he asked. ‘For Euan has to sweep the stackyard afore the hairst comes home, you ken.’

‘Aye, you get on wi your work.’ Gil patted the hand and stepped away. ‘That was a good word, Euan. My thanks, and God’s blessing on you.’ He raised his hat again, and watched as the crouched figure made its crabbed way back into the barn, the hen spreading her wings to keep her balance.

‘Daft thing,’ said Ned, leading Gil’s horse forward.

‘Waste o time that was, maister,’ said Tam.

‘On the contrary,’ said Gil. ‘It was well worth it. I’m glad you pointed the place out, Tam.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘Now, have we time to call at the Kirkton afore we get back to Stronvar, do you think, Ned?’

The Kirkton of Balquhidder hardly seemed a larger settlement than the group of buildings which made up Drumyre. Having sent Ned and Tam onwards from Gartnafueran with the weary horses, Gil followed Donal on foot across the flat valley floor, and paused at the end of the resonant wooden bridge to study the clachan. There was the little kirk itself, perched on a natural platform some way back from the river. Perhaps half a dozen houses lay around it, a ring of tall grey stones stood on a grassy slope below, and there was enough farmed land round about to make it clear that more than the old priest’s glebe was being worked, although the harvest was not quite ready. Several small black cows were making their slow way home from the water-meadows, with a herd laddie singing among them. Above the kirk, on the steep, imposing bare rock he had seen from the garden at Stronvar, two goats were perched casually nibbling tussocks of grass.

‘No, no, Sir Duncan is not dwelling in the kirk any longer,’ said Donal when asked. ‘He would be falling off the loft ladder, you understand, the age he is. Sir William got him a fine house built on the glebe land, with a good stout door and a latch, and even a tirling-pin as if you were in Callander.’

‘He’ll be there now, I suppose,’ said Gil, looking about. ‘It’s a wide parish for an old man to take care of. Who has the living? Can Sir William not get a younger man put in?’

‘The way I was hearing it,’ said Donal, ‘Sir William was asking them at Dunblane to name a new priest for the parish, last year it would be, and one of the Canons came himself to see.’ He grinned. ‘It was maybe one of Sir Duncan’s good days. He was having more of those, you will understand, maister, what with young Rob Ruaidh that is keeping him washed and fed now, even if the laddie can’t be making a peat fire stay alight. Whatever, Canon Fresall went home saying it was all as it should be and no need to put the old man out of his living. We were thinking,’ he said with an innocent expression, ‘he’d maybe have to pay a new man more to dwell here, so of course he would be pleased to think all was well.’

‘I’ve no doubt of it.’ Gil paused beside the ring of stones. Several children playing in its heart scattered to peer shyly at the stranger from under a group of hawthorn trees. ‘Which is Sir Duncan’s house?’

Donal pointed to the nearest of the long, low buildings. This one was stouter than some, with good stone gables and a sound layer of bracken thatch held down by a new rope net. Peat smoke filtered up through the mesh; it looked as if Rob Ruaidh was in control of the fire for the moment. Gil picked his way along the path, avoiding more hens and an inquisitive sheep, pausing at the open door to savour the smell of cooking which met him before he reached out to rattle at the tirling-pin Donal had mentioned.

‘Sir Duncan?’ he called. ‘Are you within? May I enter?’

There was a clatter in the shadows inside, and something hissed on the fire.

‘Christ and his saints preserve us!’ said a voice. A young voice, a lowland voice. A hostile voice. ‘What in the Deil’s name are you doing here, Cunningham?’

‘Christ aid!’ said Gil, equally startled. ‘Who — Robert Montgomery?’

‘The same.’ Another clatter as something was set down, movement in the shadows, and a tall young man came to the doorway, chin up, staring intently down his nose at Gil. Dark hair sprang thickly from a wide forehead, a square jaw jutted. Robert Montgomery, nephew of that turbulent baron Hugh, Lord Montgomery who was at odds with all Cunninghams.

‘Of course,’ said Gil after a moment’s genealogical reckoning, ‘your uncle’s lady is a Campbell. She must be first cousin to Lady Stewart, that’s the connection. But why here — ?’

‘Is it any of your business?’ demanded the young man.

‘I suppose it isny,’ agreed Gil. ‘Good day to you, Robert. Is Sir Duncan in his house? Can I get a word wi him?’

‘No,’ said Robert baldly. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘He’s sleeping the now. He’s no had a good day, I’ll not disturb him.’ Not for you, suggested his tone.

‘I’m after a bit of local history,’ Gil said. ‘Would you say he could manage that some time? How bad is he?’

‘Mortal,’ said Robert. He looked over his shoulder again, and stepped out into the sunshine. ‘He’s got a week or so, maybe, but he’s on his way out. He’s all too like my grandsire in his last days.’ He considered briefly. ‘You’d get more sense out of him on a morning. If you can get him on to a subject he likes, he’s clear enough yet, and the history of the parish would do that.’

‘Is he not even managing the Office?’ said Gil, dismayed.

‘No,’ said Robert again. He had a way of saying the word which conveyed volumes, something which Gil recalled from his first encounter with the young man, more than a year since in very difficult circumstances. ‘Martainn Clerk and I can deal wi the Office,’ he expanded, ‘seeing I’m in Minor Orders, but there’s no been a Mass said in St Angus’ Kirk for weeks.’ His face softened. ‘He lies in his bed reciting Matins and Lauds over and over again, jumbling all the words and losing the place, certain he’s offering up what’s right.’

‘It is an offering, then,’ Gil observed. Robert looked at him sharply, and then away again. ‘And you have charge of him and his house, do you?’

‘I do.’ And do you want to make anything of it? said the tone of voice.

‘Not easy. Cooking and keeping him clean, as well as taking care of the Office — it’s a lot to do on your own.’

‘That was the point,’ said Robert, with a sour laugh ‘Anyway, it’s not as if there was anything else to do out here.’

Gil carefully refrained from looking around at the hills full of game, the river leaping with fish, the meadows full of wildfowl. A young man reared like this one must be tempted almost hourly to go out with bow or spear or line, to fetch home meat for the pot or for salting down for winter. Fighting the temptation would almost be worse than the menial tasks heaped on him by his servitude to the dying man.

‘I suppose you’re here,’ said Robert abruptly, ‘about this tale of the fellow come back from Elfhame?’

‘I am,’ agreed Gil, raising one eyebrow. ‘What tellt you that?’

‘Aye, well. It’s the only thing in the parish for the last hundred years that might attract Blacader’s quaestor.’

‘How much have you heard about it?’ Gil asked. ‘You scrieved the letter to Andrew Drummond at Dunblane, they tell me.’

‘I did. Two letters, in fact. The old woman asked me to write, told me exactly what she wanted said, made her mark at the foot o the paper.’ He shrugged. ‘If she’s had an answer, I’ve heard nothing. I’ve no been asked to scrieve a reply, any road.’

‘The second letter you wrote,’ said Gil slowly. ‘It promised a valuable gift to the Cathedral if they take the boy back at the sang-schule.’ Robert nodded curtly. ‘Tell me, do you think she had talked it over wi her family?’

‘I’ve no a notion. I never set an eye on any o them, save only the fellow himself when he cam to walk her back to her pony.’ He grinned without humour. ‘Looked ordinar enough to me, a likely fellow in a blue doublet, in sore need o a barber. I don’t think much o the way they clip their hair in Elfhame. Why?’

‘So he never heard her talk about the letter?’ Gil said.

‘No in my presence.’ Another sour laugh. ‘What, you mean she’s made all these plans for him and never consulted him? That’d be right, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. ‘As for whether the family kens she’s planning to give away that much land — or what they’ll say when they find out — I wouldny care to guess.’

‘Well, I never asked her. I scrieved the note for her, and I took the coin she gied me for it,’ Robert said bitterly, ‘and learned all the history o the matter from my maister, and that was that.’ He tilted his head. ‘Is that him stirring? No, maybe no. Still and all, I’d best forgo the pleasure o your company, Cunningham, and go back in. If I’m no there when he wakes he’ll take fright, and get up to search for me, and last time he near fell in the peat fire. And if you want a word wi him, come by some morning and see if he’s fit for’t.’

‘I’ll do that.’ Gil studied the young man, noting the dark rings round his eyes, the way the square jaw was pared to the bone. ‘How long have you been here, Robert?’

‘A year, six weeks and two days,’ said Robert Montgomery succinctly, and ducked back into the priest’s house.

‘Penance?’ said Alys.

‘It must be,’ agreed Gil. He picked a sprig of mint growing in a tub by the arbour, and crushed it in his fingers. Socrates came to sniff at his hand, and sneezed. ‘I hardly liked to ask how long he has left to serve, but he’s obviously keeping a tally.’

‘Poor boy,’ said Alys thoughtfully, staring across the loch at the Kirkton in its haze of smoke. ‘I have wondered what became of him. After all, he never intended — and now he is body-servant to a dying man, and I suppose he cannot leave however bad it gets.’

‘If the old man is dying, it must end some time,’ said Gil.

She nodded, and leaned against his shoulder. ‘I wonder if he is allowed company? I suppose Lady Stewart must know more about him than she said. I can ask her.’

‘He might not welcome your company either,’ said Gil. ‘He keeps his low opinion of Cunninghams. Unless it’s his manner,’ he added. ‘Like Death, perhaps, he shewith to all rudesse.’

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Tell me again what you learned these two days.’

He drew her comfortably closer and began the account from the beginning. As always, he had already found that setting it in order had helped, and her penetrating questions shed a different light on the several interviews. By the time he had finished, the dog was asleep.

‘Someone came for the songman,’ she said. ‘I suppose the boy heard the arrangements being made. I wonder what he really saw, and where Hell is. If he had already decided he had seen the Devil, then he might mishear some other word.’

‘Wherever it is,’ said Gil, ‘it’s somewhere with a kirk rich enough to draw away a singer from Dunblane.’

‘Dunkeld?’ wondered Alys. ‘No, surely the songman would have been traced to there by now. Wherever it is, it need not be so big a place itself, even if its kirk is well endowed. You know Scotland far better than I, Gil. Can you think of a likely name?’

‘No,’ admitted Gil, ‘and I’ve never met such a one in a document either. But I’ve never travelled north of here myself. I’ll ask about when I’m at Perth.’

‘And I wonder why the secrecy?’ Alys pursued.

‘To avoid the donation to the Cathedral for freeing him?’

‘Or because the — the agent, whoever he is, prefers to act in secrecy,’ she speculated. ‘I wonder — how reliable a witness is the boy Walter, do you think?’

‘Not very,’ said Gil, pulling a face. ‘His brother called him a daft laddie, and I’d agree.’

‘Hmm,’ she said again. ‘And the Drummond matter — the brother is fallen into a melancholy, you are saying.’

‘So it seems,’ agreed Gil. ‘Sighing and moping, talking endlessly about his guilt. Lost in the Forest of Noyous Hevynes.’

‘So it seems,’ she repeated, and tilted her head to look up at him. ‘Yes. And this strange creature at the farm over the pass — what do you think of his tale?’

‘Clear enough, so far as it goes. Someone lifted young David Drummond that morning, before he met the Murray boy, bound him and bore him off southwards. He does seem to have been an outstanding singer, so I suppose he could have been stolen away for the same reason as John Rattray and the others. But why he was lifted there rather than at Dunblane I don’t understand.’

‘It must have been someone who knew the boy’s movements.’ Alys considered this for a moment. ‘He would be guarded, I suppose, at Dunblane, or at least he would have company and a song-master who would take responsibility for the boys. Easier to steal him away out here on the journey, where he wouldn’t be missed for days. And Euan had seen Davie Drummond returning, you said? And spoken to him?’

‘Aye, and David knew him.’

‘That’s no surprise,’ she said seriously. ‘Davie stood by the track yesterday and named all the hills and farms round about to me. He knows the family song about Dalriach. Whoever he is, Gil, and I’m as certain as Lady Stewart that he’s close kin to the Drummonds, he has been well taught. He has even mentioned having crossed the pass thirty years ago, before he was lifted, but he says he saw nothing when it happened.’

‘Clever,’ said Gil. She nodded agreement. ‘I suppose Euan might have mentioned having seen him stolen away when he spoke to him this time. But why is he here? And where has he come from?’ He looked down at the velvet-covered crown of her head. ‘Who could have taught him? Questions, questions, and precious few answers that I can see.’

‘I would say,’ said Alys, ‘he has been taught by someone who knows Dalriach and all the land and people round about. So it has to be one of the family, or I suppose one of their tenants at Dalriach. Will you go away again tomorrow, Gil?’ She turned to look up at him, and made a face when he nodded. ‘I am invited to the harvest celebration in a day or two, and to sleep there afterwards. They called it a ceilidh — an evening’s merriment. I will keep a close eye on everyone, and perhaps I will see who it might have been.’

‘But he wasn’t taught locally,’ said Gil. ‘In a neighbourhood like this, you could never do such a thing in secret. People gossip. We need to find out whether the sister, the one that is married along the glen, has been out of Balquhidder recently.’

‘I can ask Seonaid. She will likely know.’

He nodded. ‘And I should have asked in Dunblane whether Andrew Drummond or his mistress had had a visitor in recent weeks.’

‘She would never have had a guest so close to her time, poor woman,’ said Alys firmly, and crossed herself, ‘least of all a young man, and the Canon could hardly have kept a kinsman at his manse in the town without it being noticed. I may not know about country life, Gil, but I have lived in towns all my days. Did you say you had spoken to the servant?’

‘Drummond’s man? Yes — I asked him about the children. A boy and a girl, eight and four years old. Drummond stirred himself enough to take them to their other grandmother in Perth, two weeks since, the man told me. She’s remarried to a tanner there, it seems.’

‘The poor poppets,’ said Alys in sympathy. She waved a hand across her face. ‘I think those biting creatures are coming out, and the supper will be ready soon.’

‘Yes, we should go in.’ He rose, and gave her his hand. The dog woke, and scrambled to his feet, shaking himself. ‘I still don’t see why Blacader sent me into this thicket. Nobody is murdered, no crime has been committed.’

‘Someone may yet be murdered,’ Alys said seriously. They began to stroll down the garden, arm in arm. ‘Davie told me the same tale as Murdo Dubh. There have been several accidents, which might be attempts at murder, and at least two of them might have injured the old woman instead, if Ailidh or Davie had not detected them.’ She paused where the grass paths crossed, and counted on her fingers. ‘There was the ladder and the pitchfork that Murdo told us about, there was a pair of shears hidden point up in a basket of fleece — ’

‘How would that injure David Drummond?’

‘He was combing the locks for Mistress Drummond to spin them. Either could have been the next to reach into the basket, and the shears had been sharpened to a vicious point. Ailidh showed me them. Then there was a basket of mushrooms brought in for cooking, that the third granddaughter Elizabeth had gathered one morning. Davie saw the bad one himself. Elizabeth said she never picked it, and Ailidh says she believes her, for they use mushrooms for all sorts of things, for dyeing and physicking cattle, and their mother has taught them well.’

‘All circumstantial,’ said Gil slowly, ‘but they add up badly, don’t they?’

‘They do,’ she agreed seriously. ‘Mistress Drummond will say only that someone has ill-wished them, so they told me, but both Davie and Ailidh think it is more serious than that.’

‘Alys, have a care. And Murdo? What does he think?’

Her quick smile flickered.

‘If that relationship prospers,’ she pronounced, ‘it will do well. Murdo thinks just as Ailidh does.’

He laughed aloud, and caught up her hand again.

‘Well, I think we should go in to supper,’ he said, ‘so I hope you do too!’